


The Way

by sharkcar



Series: Clone Wars Tarot Cards [23]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Imagination, Mandalorian Culture, Psychoanalysis, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 06:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: Clone Cadet Bly and his brothers want to be good soldiers, but when it came to what kind of people to be, they were left a little bereft."Our educational programming on Kamino didn’t give us much in the way of role models. Let’s see, there was…Jango. We could all look to Jango for how to be. They used his image to reinforce our rules of conduct. We had posters of him hanging in the dormitory, reminding us to make our beds or brush our teeth.Except, despite the messaging, the cloners didn’t want us to be like Jango because he wasn’t terribly obedient. So they conditioned that out of us. Talk about feeling inadequate over an unattainable ideal. Choosing to be ‘good’ over ‘bad’ was hard to do perfectly. It seemed so inconsistent that I chewed my nails down to the nubs trying to figure out what it all meant."





	The Way

[LINK HERE: The Moon](https://sharkcar.tumblr.com/post/186451533935/the-moon-part-of-a-series-of-clone-wars-tarot)

The kick landed suddenly on the back of the left side of my rib cage. I was knocked forward from where I sat and I hit the floor sprawled on my face.  
  
I kept still, paralyzed with shock and fear. The adult combat trainer had a good twenty kilos on me. At four years old, clone physiology left me at the size of a Jango at twelve.  
  
He stood over me, looming so menacingly that I was sure I could feel the weight of his shadow at my back.   
  
“Don’t sit THAT way! It’s effeminate,” he spat.  
  
The way he said it, it sounded as if whatever I was doing was wrong somehow on a visceral level, but I could not understand the reason. I, and all the other clones, had never seen a humanoid woman before. We had no concept of what ‘feminine’ things might be, never mind ‘effeminate’ ways of doing things. I just sat the way I sat. No one gave it any notice before. I certainly couldn’t understand how there was a way to sit that could be wrong by reason of being dissimilar to what ‘masculine’ humans should do.  
  
Still, I knew better than to argue with a trainer. I simply stood up, then sat down in an exact replication of his style for doing so. Nevertheless, I glared at him and looked him in the eyes, though the deep breaths I took felt abrasive in my throat.  
  
Our main martial arts teacher, Cabur Zyne came walking over quickly to see what the trouble was. The trainer who’d delivered the kick grumbled something about me looking ‘faggoty’ and walked away.  
  
I relaxed slightly and hunched my shoulders, clenching my fists tightly to stop the trembling. Everyone had seen.  
  
My brother Cody was beside Zyne observing, as he often was. Cody had a reputation as the most merciless fighter in the whole combat club. I got worried he was looking for pointers.  
  
In the evenings after officers’ academy classes were done for the day, most of us clones attended the optional activities the Mandalorian combat trainers offered. I always did. We realized pretty quickly that the guys who sucked up to the Mandalorians got to find out all kinds of interesting things about the outside galaxy that we hadn’t been allowed to know about before. The problem was, hearing about Mandalorian culture only from Mandalorians tended to make brothers into fans of it. Cody was totally obsessed. He seemed to be trying to be like them in every way. Almost everyone was. If he decided that picking on a brother for being ‘faggoty’ was a new thing, everyone would follow. I could defend myself, but not from everyone at once.  
  
Our educational programming on Kamino didn’t give us much in the way of role models. Let’s see, there was…Jango. We could all look to Jango for how to be. They used his image to reinforce our rules of conduct. We had posters of him hanging in the dormitory, reminding us to make our beds or brush our teeth.  
  
Except, despite the messaging, the cloners didn’t want us to be like Jango because he wasn’t terribly obedient. So they conditioned that out of us. Talk about feeling inadequate over an unattainable ideal. Choosing to be ‘good’ over ‘bad’ was hard to do perfectly. It seemed so inconsistent that I chewed my nails down to the nubs trying to figure out what it all meant.  
  
Then the Mandalorian combat trainers came in our third year. As trainers, the Mandalorians didn’t seem to spare the young. They could be brutal on us if we screwed up. I understood that. They were training children for battle, they couldn’t afford to have future soldiers who didn’t focus. Corporal punishment wasn’t kind, but it was memorable. You weren’t quick to screw up again. So I could forgive the violence. We brothers had always been permitted to hit each other, so it became a way to solve problems. However, we never were allowed to attack anyone who wasn’t a clone, unless given specific orders. The power differential between us and our trainers was completely one-sided.  
  
Still, Mandalorians’ purported ideals that they taught us were more romantic than ‘good soldiers follow orders’ and ‘the Republic is Right’, because Mandalorian ideals came with approval if you excelled. They were much less strict on conformity, offering heaps of creative expression and traditions and stories.  
  
I enjoyed the history lessons and the martial arts, but especially the language. We’d only ever been taught Basic (in Jango’s accent) early on. But those of us with a talent for it could pick up some Kaminoan as the cloners discussed things amongst themselves. The trainers spoke varied and interesting dialects of their mother tongue. Some of the teachers, like Cabur Zyne, were scholars of their history and they spoke an ancient and eloquent classical version that was used primarily for writing. As we adopted their words, the Mando became somewhat affectionate enough of us to decide to instruct us as to how to be more like them.  
  
If we wanted to study their culture, our combat trainers even used to give us their literature to read. Word books were allowed by the cloners because languages involved problem solving so they were a skill that could increase our value as soldiers. The cloners didn’t think to censor texts in foreign languages, the way they did all of our ‘appropriate’ reading material in Basic. There were all sorts of situations and concepts that we had never been allowed to hear about before, which required speculation. When our combat trainers came in from outside, they brought witness to what things were like in this ‘Galaxy’ that up until then was mythological for all we knew. We were free to imagine.  
  
This reprimand for being ‘faggoty’ was the first time I felt the boot of conformity from these trainers. There were things that I could do wrong without even knowing it. They made the rules.  
  
Zyne didn’t ask if I was alright. He couldn’t side with one of us over one of his kind. But his facial expression seemed to me to be one of sympathy.  
  
When I got called up for my next spar, I ended my brother opponent with a savage precision. There were two hits. I hit him, he hit the mat. I briefly made eye contact with the trainer who had kicked me. His face was one of approval. Somehow that didn’t make me feel so good.  
  
Cody came to me at the end of class, “Have you finished your translation of that chapter for tomorrow? I wanted someone to go over it with.”   
  
He didn’t ask in a friendly manner or anything. His tone was more like he was giving an order. I barely knew what to say.  
  
Nobody ever messed with him. Cody was a little taller than average. He was brilliant. Good at everything. And he was considered the prettiest. I’m unsure why that was, we were all practically identical. Maybe he looked the most like template. Or maybe he was just the most symmetrical or something, I don’t know. It’s not like we went around telling him so. But looking at him didn’t make me annoyed with myself, so that was pleasant. I don’t know why that mattered.  
  
I didn’t say no, I found myself following him back to his bunk at Social Time. Everybody saw.  
  
Cody’s bunk adjacent was not back yet, so it was just the two of us there, while most brothers were still on the benches below, doing homework.  
  
Cody always had his own homework done before classes were over. He’d take notes with one hand, while doing the homework with the other. Often he made drawings in the margins, seemingly just for fun. It could have made me envious of the ease with which he did stuff. The truth was, I was a little in awe of him.  
  
We weren’t doing anything but reading, but for some reason I blushed a little when his bunk adjacent climbed up the ladder.  
  
Wolffe had just been in the enlisted officers’ quarters helping his batch mates with their homework, also known as doing their homework and letting them copy it. It was faster than tutoring them, which was what he was supposed to be doing. Tutoring wasn’t ever going to work, they were barely literate.  
  
“I don’t know why you keep doing this, you’re only hurting yourself,” Cody scolded.  
  
“They weren’t particularly appreciative. Except Boost. He knows how close he is to being branded defective by reason of stupidity without me, so he at least let me share some of his sugar ration,” Wolffe was hanging on the ladder. “I won’t have time to do my homework again. Good thing I know I can get it from my bunk adjacent. He’ll give it to me, even though he’ll be judgmental about it.”  
  
“And he will help you because he doesn’t like to see you get hit by the electrostaffs for being a poor student,” Cody shook his head.  
  
“Pity is a kind of love,” Wolffe grinned. Wolffe injected himself into the situation further as if he was asserting territory.   
  
Instead of extracting his own bed drawer beside Cody’s, he climbed in to sit next to Cody on his. Cody had to back up slightly to make room, but he rested his feet against Wolffe’s leg. It was so casual that it looked habitual. I didn’t know why that made me jealous.  
  
I knew that I was considered kind of…cute…for a brother, not a hair out of place. My red uniform not even faded.  
  
Wolffe looked a mess, with a uniform that had been torn in places from getting beaten up near constantly. His hands were clean, but he often wiped them on the clothes, so they were wrinkled and frayed in places. On the clone beauty scale, he was a goblin.  
  
Cody handed over his datapad, “One of these days, I’m going to say no. Then what will you do?”  
  
“Who says I don’t kind of like getting punished? I’m friends with you, so obviously pain is a positive,” he was only half joking. Or maybe none at all. He started typing rapidly into his datapad, eyes darting between the two screens.  
  
I finally hazarded a word, “Uh…it’s polite to say hello.”  
  
Wolffe acted casual. It was his territory. I didn’t get to make rules.   
  
“So you’re Five-Tui,” Wolffe remembered my last two numbers. “I’m Wolffe,” he said importantly. But he didn’t dare make eye contact.  
  
I was offended, “I go by Bly now.”  
  
Wolffe smirked, “So what’s Bly mean? What kind of a nonsense name is it this time?”   
  
Brothers were taking on some fancy monikers since the Mandalorians showed up. Most of them didn’t stick.  
  
I didn’t care he was insulting me as a joke. If he kept it up I’d make him regret it. We both knew I looked tougher than him.   
  
“It’s a standard diminutive of Briikasar,” I had heard the name in one of the books and had researched its history and meaning before deciding the name suited me.  
  
“I don’t get how Bly makes sense, you know, as a nickname for that,” Wolffe didn’t like the Mandalorians.   
  
The feeling was mutual.  
  
“It comes from the Concordian dialect where they pronounce the word like, ‘Bliykasser’,” Cody pronounced the dialect perfectly.  
  
Wolffe still didn’t look up, “What the hell is ‘Concordian dialect’, you spaz?”  
  
“It’s the dialect spoken by the people who live on Concordia, Mandalore’s moon,” I explained.  
  
Wolffe shrugged, “Seems a long way to go for a name if you have to explain it all the time.”  
  
“Absolutely no one else has asked,” I called him out on his poodoo.  
  
Suddenly, he looked up, as if intrigued.  
  
Cody rolled his eyes, not for the last time, “As if you didn’t get your name for repeatedly stuffing things in your mouth.”  
  
“I mean, if it was Blii, or Brii, that might make sense, right?” Wolffe could tell he was annoying us.  
  
Cody nearly said so, “May we continue?”  
  
“If you must,” Wolffe continued his copying.  
  
I translated from the book, “…with skin of milk.”  
  
Wolffe squinted, looking up from the datapads finally, “What?”  
  
I ignored him and addressed Cody, “I think it means it as a metaphor about the color or texture rather than as her carrying an actual bag made of skin containing milk. Although, that would be a possible interpretation, grammatically.”  
  
Cody shook his head, “I read that in olden times animal skin bags used to be used for fermenting milk into an alcoholic beverage, which was consumed communally to promote visions. The moon was actually a divinity they prayed to to receive the visions. So maybe it’s a play on words. It means both. This is why I like poetry,” Cody had read widely not just on Mando mythology, but he was studying literary analysis of the mythology and other parallels. He had figured out that the more diligent he was as a student, the more information he could have.  
  
“You like poetry?” I asked.  
  
“You’re missing the obvious meaning of milk skin, you sad bastards. I want to hear more, what color or texture is implied?” Wolffe interrupted.  
  
“Pardon?” I asked.  
  
Wolffe shrugged, “You said it’s a metaphor about the color whatever. What color is milk though?”  
  
“Blue?” I guessed. In Republic Loyalty classes, we had learned about factory farming of banthas. They didn’t give us any milk to try, or show us any pictures, but we had to sit through the dairy industry marketing pitch. There were descriptive adjectives in that, which included the information that it was blue.  
  
“So her skin is blue?” Wolffe put down Cody’s datapad. He decided to join the conversation, even though, as I said, no one had asked. “I’ve never seen a blue Mandalorian, do they come that way? I would describe the skin color of most of those Mando as pink, but they seem to think the proper term is ‘white’. But they’re not really white, Kaminoans, they’re white. They just use it to refer to themselves as opposed to us. Does that mean we’re ‘black’ in their minds? Are they color blind and just see in shade gradations? I guess they could use black if they just meant we’re the opposite of them. I wouldn’t care. Black is my favorite color. I mean, of the ones I’ve seen anyway.”  
  
“How do you ever get any studying done?” I asked Cody.  
  
Wolffe continued, “As for appropriate metaphors, what else is milk like?”  
  
Cody was a bit of a know it all, “You remember anatomy class, it is what mammaries secrete to feed young. But only the females do, I guess. I think human milk is white, so the translation might mean pale skin. We can ask our teacher tomorrow to be certain.”  
  
“I didn’t ask what it was, I asked what it’s like, to experience that? Doesn’t that sound strange, getting food from another person? Can you believe women can make nutritious food with their own bodies to keep young alive? Where does she get the extra nutrition and fluid?” Wolffe was a little hyper from the sugar ration, evidently.  
  
“She has to eat and drink more,” Cody frowned. “I mean, I would assume,” he blushed.  
  
I smirked, “If it uses ‘like’ it’s a simile not a metaphor.”  
  
Wolffe lowered his voice and spoke through his teeth, “But a skin full of milk is an obvious term for breast. How are you not getting that? Does that book have any more poetic descriptions of breasts? Thinking about them gives me feelings that I like. The language in the textbooks seems purposefully vague.”  
  
Cody was trying to be patient in front of the guest, “No. This is completely appropriate material. It’s an ancient story from before the age of space travel. The protagonist gets turned into some animal called an ulik and asks for help from the moon Concordia.”  
  
“Well, for similes, it would help to know what it’s like? This ‘moon’ Concordia?” Wolffe pointed out. “Specifically more words talking about her skin.”  
  
Cody rolled his eyes, “You’ve had astronomy classes, moons are typically round.”   
  
We had never seen moons because of all the rain clouds on our planet.   
  
“But in olden times, they imagined a moon was actually a woman riding in a boat.”  
  
Wolffe laughed, “Round? How did a moon look like a woman in a boat, then? Is that how women look? Round?”  
  
I wrinkled my nose, “I’m not sure what the sense was. Other than I think Mandalorian humans tended to anthropomorphize everything.”  
  
Wolffe looked impressed because my vocabulary was sweet. I kind of liked being noticed for that.  
  
Wolffe went on, “Like, I guess a life raft could be round, if viewed from above. Or below. Maybe that’s the sense. We’re seeing her boat, but we’re like…underwater looking up.” He was suddenly really excited about the idea. “Did they imagine they were seeing her bottom sitting in her boat?”  
  
Cody looked dubious, “Well, moons seem to change shape in relation to where they are to the system’s sun or suns. I guess half-moons or crescents are boat-ish looking in the traditional sense.”  
  
It was funny that a five year old would say something like ‘traditional sense’ but that was Cody. He had never seen a proper boat either. The Kaminoans could breathe underwater, so they weren’t big on the need for boats. We hadn’t seen more than rescue craft for when we accidentally fell off the platforms.  
  
“I mean, in olden times, that’s probably the first thing they thought of when they saw a hemispherical shape like that. Boats seem to have been common since very early on in sentient history, as far as I’ve read,” Cody seemed to have a whole fantasy universe built on Mandalorian literature, which he tended to call ‘olden times’.  
  
“Seems unfair, sometimes. This world is made of water and we’re an invasive species made for land. Otherwise, I think we might have been able to figure a way to build some boats,” I was skirting dangerously close to controversial talk. We all knew our conversations were monitored by facility security, so I tried to keep it theoretical. “Did you ever try to imagine what that would be like, if we tried it? You know, what would we use? How might we do it?”  
  
“And who says that’s all there is out there but water? That’s just what they told us. And it’s true as far as I can perceive. But how do we know the moons of Kamino are out there floating above us in the sky? The cloners talk about there being three from time immemorial, and Kaminoans say they can sense them through clouds by their gravitational pull. But I can’t. The trainers say planets can have a lot of moons, or one, or none. But I’ve never seen a moon. It could be a lie with mutually agreed on rules about their nature even though they don’t exist. Like a theology.”  
  
We were taught in loyalty classes to be logical atheists loyal only to the secular Republic. So technically, Wolffe was within proper programming guidelines to be skeptical.  
  
“I’ve got no firsthand proof of a moon. There is a good possibility they lied to us about them. There could be land out there and they just don’t want us to know about it, so they tell us there is nothing out there,” Wolffe was definitely skirting the line for what were acceptable topics for us to discuss. So suddenly, he walked it back, “Probably we’d all perish in a watery abyss and get eaten by chite sharks before we found anything though. At least here, they feed me and my lungs can have all the oxygen I want. No dehydration from drinking salt water and my own piss. That’s not just what they told me, it’s what I believe.” He played to the cameras. Then he changed tone, “When I use my imagination, I don’t waste it thinking up how to theoretically build a boat, or use it to explain what the moon is or what it’s doing. I would make it more relevant to us, like make it really kandosii,” Wolffe at least knew enough Mando’a to drop slang. Almost every brother knew the slang, or at least the swears.  
  
“You can’t write mythological stories,” Cody protested, “They’re handed down.”  
  
“Somebody had to in the first place,” I objected.  
  
Wolffe ignored him, “Like, once upon a time there was this brother.”  
  
Cody looked confused, “One of us?”  
  
“Yeah. In all my dreams, I’m the protagonist. So I imagine stories where the guys look like me. It’s natural,” Wolffe explained.  
  
Cody shook his head, “Myths are supposed to have more archetypal heroes, traditional themes.”   
  
At four years of age, we were not old enough to be part of his ‘olden times’.  
  
I found that very limiting. “I thought anyone could be an archetype? Isn’t that the point of them being roles?” I reminded.  
  
Cody rolled his eyes, but he looked entertained, so he let Wolffe go on.  
  
“Anyway, so one day this woman comes out of the sea and she’s totally beautiful and into him. Kissing him on the mouth and everything,” Woflfe had lowered his voice to tell us about it, because it would probably be unacceptable content to the Kaminoans. He didn’t want to be censored.  
  
“Oh, I wonder what that fantasy is about,” I rolled my eyes sarcastically.  
  
“Don’t psychoanalyze my dreams,” Wolffe scowled.  
  
“Mermaid bride is a standard mythic trope,” Cody said, testifying for the cameras as it were so if the Kaminoans asked about it, it was homework, not dirty talk.  
  
Wolffe went on in the same loud whisper, “So they make a baby in the traditional way and their son is the coolest man in the universe, like super muscular and powerful.”  
  
I nodded, “I think I like this.”  
  
Wolffe looked happy we were listening, “And he has gills or whatever, so he can go wherever he wants. So he takes over Kamino and becomes king because he’s so unbelievably kandosii. Like riding sharks and stuff.”  
  
Cody shook his head, “We can’t make kids.”  
  
Wolffe slapped my forehead, “My story is premised on humans with gills, but you object to accuracy on that front? What’s wrong with you?”  
  
I nodded, “I’d rather see how he’d overcome the problem.”  
  
Wolffe threw up his hands, “Fine, mermaid bride has a magical uterus for some reason, there, done.”  
  
I lost interest.  
  
Cody nodded, “Simplistic. But their son’s birth is miraculous. That is classic hero archetype stuff. Actually, mythology is also full of magical uteruses. Women being able to mate with eels and stuff.”  
  
Wolffe laughed involuntarily loudly at that, “Thanks for that image. That’s not gonna give me weird nightmares or anything.”  
  
I shook my head, “Yeah, I know what those magical uterus myths mean.”  
  
“What?” Wolffe seemed concerned.  
  
Cody nodded, “Usually something happens like the eel gets ripped apart and buried.”  
  
Wolffe looked confused, “What’s…buried?”  
  
Cody clicked onto his datapad and showed him an illustration he’d drawn for his Loyalty Class essay, ‘Why the Republic is Right about Agriculture’. “You know, interred. You dig a hole in the ground and put something in and cover it up with the dirt.”  
  
Wolffe looked like the picture made his skin crawl.  
  
I thought he looked fun to tease, “Then the eel’s body parts spout into a plant.”  
  
He laughed nervously, “Eew.”  
  
Cody flicked through the essay, “Like seaweed only it comes from the earth of a terran world. It’s got these roots that grow down into the dirt like spindly fingers and burrow their way down in to find water.”  
  
Wolffe made a grossed out face, “I don’t like that. How does a plant even know which way is down? It doesn’t have sense organs? That’s creepy. And dirt is made of rotted things and particles.” Then he changed topic, as if he was doing a literary review, “And I feel bad for the eel, one minute he’s rubbing on a female human, or whatever it is they do together to make it compatible, the next, her descendants use him as manure and tell myths about it.”  
  
“Or sing. A lot of myths are sung,” I said matter-of-factly.  
  
Wolffe laughed at the thought. He looked like he wanted to try to sing, but he knew better than to do that. It was forbidden. So he demonstrated a few lyrics, “Dad made me, but he’s tasty, so dad is now my meat, and I just wanna eat….”  
  
Cody was smiling, but he put his finger up to his mouth and made that face we make to remind each other that the cameras are there.  
  
Wolffe shook his head, “Terrans are weird.”


End file.
